José Ortega y Gasset’s Philosophy of Life

“I am I and my circumstances”

Spanish phenomenologist and existentialist José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) crafted a philosophy of life from elements taken from John Stuart Mill, William James, Edmund Husserl, and Immanuel Kant. He believed that the purpose of philosophy is to challenge our beliefs and prejudices to open up new ideas that better explain reality. He stated that “reflection on the phenomenon ‘human life’ is the basis of all my thought.” Ortega defended the importance of the lived experience and perspectives of individuals living in the world.

Like other philosophers we have seen, Ortega was not anti-science, but he did see the limits of science’s ability to describe the world, especially human life. He took inspiration from Albert Einstein, who had demonstrated that there is no single frame of reference, only the relative space-time perspective of the observer. From this new physics, and from the phenomenology of Husserl, Ortega concluded that “one and the same reality may split into many diverse realities when it is beheld from different points of view.”

“I am I and my circumstances”

Ortega saw human life is a dynamic dialogue between the individual and the world. Each one of us is an individual human who lives in a reality of situations, people, and things. He said that every individual human life is a point of view directed upon the universe. Each person’s perspective is a component of reality, and all…